Tag Archives | design patent

Contraband Sports LLC sells workout products, including its gloves for use in weight lifting. Fit Four LLC sent a notice of intellectual property rights violation to Amazon alleging the Contraband’s gloves infringed Fit Four’s Design patent D652,607 (the ‘607 patent). This resulted in Amazon taking down Contraband’s gloves from Amazon, “during the busy holiday season and less than one week before Christmas.”

Contraband filed suit for declaratory judgement that its gloves do not infringe the ‘607 patent. The complaint asserted the following differences, among others, between its glove and the ‘607 patent:

The ‘607 patent provides mostly plain surfaces on the front and back of the glove. Contraband’s gloves includes a number of design features that are absent from the ‘607 patent.

In a 2016 decision in Samsung v. Apple, the Supreme Court determined that the relevant “article of manufacture” for calculating total profits damages for design patent infringement could be either (1) the product (e.g. the Samsung phone) sold to a customer or (2) a component of that product.

Previously, the “article of manufacture” for calculating total profits damages for design patent infringement was the entire product sold to a customer. The profits to the entire product are usually likely to be greater than profits to a component of the entire product.

The case was sent back to the trial court and a new trial was ordered on damages. In October 2017, the trial court ruled that a four factor test would be used to determine what is the article of manufacture for …

In 2007, Apple released its first generation iPhone. After Apple released its iPhone, Samsung released as series of smartphones “that resembled the iPhone.” In 2011, Apples sued Samsung alleging various infringement claims, including that Samsung’s smartphones infringed Apple’s D593,087, D618,677, and D604,305 design patents. A jury awarded Apple $399 million in damages for design patent infringement, the entire profit Samsung made from its sale of the infringing smartphones.

Samsung appealed arguing “that the profits awarded should have been limited to the infringing ‘article of manufacture’—for example, the screen or case of the smartphone—’not the entire infringing product’—the smartphone.” The court of appeals rejected that argument reasoning that “’limit[ing] the dam- ages’ award was not required because the ‘innards of Samsung’s smartphones were not sold separately from their shells as distinct articles of …

Design patents seek to protect the appearance of an article of manufacture, such as a product or a portion of a product. Therefore, design patents consist mostly of drawings of the invention with a small amount of text. The drawings mostly define the scope of protection that will be provided under the design patent. Therefore, the details of the drawings for design patents are very important.

Surface shading in the drawings may be important to determining whether the patent design covers a particular third party product (e.g. an alleged infringer). The patent rules provide regarding design patent drawings, “Appropriate and adequate surface shading should be used to show the character or contour of the surfaces represented.” MPEP 1503.02. The rules further provide, “Lack of appropriate surface shading in the drawing …

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G smartphone on the right has a different back shape and lacks a circular home button on the front as compared to the iPhone in Figures 19 and 24 of U.S. Patent No. D593087 (“the ‘087 patent”), shown on the left. But a jury determined that the Galaxy infringed the ‘087 patent in the case of Apple v. Samsung, No. 200-cv-01846 (N.D. Cal. 2011). Did the jury ignore those different elements of the Galaxy phone?

Yes. And they were right to ignore them.

Apple drafted the ‘087 patent in a way that requires that the differences in the back shape and the home button be ignored. Apple did that by providing those features in broken lines.